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Vocabulary Review

Quiz yourself by thinking what should be in each of the black spaces below before clicking on it to display the answer.
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Vocabulary Term
Definition
Acid Deposition   sulfur oxides and nitrogen oxides, emitted by burning fossil fuels, enter the atmosphere - where they combine with oxygen and water to form sulfuric acid and nitric acid - and return to the Earth's surface  
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Acid Precipitation   conversion of sulfur oxides and nitrogen oxides to acids that return to Earth as rain, snow, or fog  
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Active solar energy systems   solar energy system that collects energy through the use of mechanical devices like photovoltaic cells or flat-plate collectors  
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Agribusiness   commercial agriculture characterized by integration of different steps in the food-processing industry, usually through ownership by large corporations  
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Agricultural density   the ratio of the # of farmers to the total amount of land suitable for agriculture  
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Agricultural revolution   the time when human beings first domesticated plants and animals and no longer relied entirely on hunting and gathering  
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Agriculture   the deliberate effort to modify a portion of Earth's surfact through the cultivation of crops and the raising of livestock for sustenance or economic gain  
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Air pollution   concentration of trace substances, such as carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, hydrocarbons, and solid particulates, at a greater level than occurs in average air  
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Animate power   power supplied by animals or people  
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Animism   belief that objects, such as plants and stones, or natural events, like thunderstorms and earthquakes, have a discrete spirit and conscious life  
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Annexation   legally adding land area to a city in the United States  
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Apartheid   laws (no longer in effect) in South Africa that physically separated different races into different geographic areas  
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Arithmetic density   the total number of people divided by the total land area  
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Autonomous religion   a religion that does not have a central authority but shares ideas and cooperates informally  
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Balance of Power   condition of roughly equal strength between opposting countries or alliances of countries  
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Balkanization   process by which a state breaks down through conflicts among its ethnicities  
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Balkanized   a small geographic area that could not successfully be organized into one or more stable states because it was inhabited by many ethnicities with complex, long-standing antagonisms toward each other  
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Base line   an east-west line designated under the Land Ordinance of 1785 to facilitate the surveying and numbering of townships in the United States  
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Basic industries   industries that sell their products or servies primarily to consumers outside the settlement  
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Biochemical oxygen demand (BOD)   amount of oxygen required by aquatic bacteria to decompose a given load of organic waste; a measure of water pollution  
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Biodiversity   the # of species within a specific habitat  
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Biomass fuel   fuel that derives from plant material and animal waste  
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Blockbusting   a process by which real estate agents convince white property owners to sell their houses at low prices because of fear that black families will soon move into the neighborhood  
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Boundary   invisible line that marks the extent of a state's territory  
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Brain drain   large-scale emigration by talented people  
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Branch (of a religion)   a large and fundamental division within a religion  
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Break-of-bulk point   a location where transfer is posible from one mode of transportation to another  
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Breeder reactor   a nuclear power plant that creates its own fuel from plutonium  
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British Received Pronunciation (BRP)   the dialect of English associated with upper-class Britons living in the London area and now considered standard in the United Kingdom  
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Bulk-gaining industry   an industry in which the final product weighs more or comprises a greater volume than the inputs  
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Bulk-reducing industry   an industry in which the final product weighs more or comprises a lower volume than the inputs  
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Business services   services that primarily meet the needs of other businesses  
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Cartography   the science of making maps  
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Caste   the class or distinct hereditary order into which a Hindu is assigned according to religious law  
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Census Tract   an area delineated by the U.S. Bureau of the Census for which statistics are published; in urbanized areas, census tracts correspond roughly to neighborhoods  
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Census   a complete enumeration of people  
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Central Business District (CBD)   the area of the city where retail and office activities are clustered  
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Central Place Theory   explains distribution of services, settlements serve as centers of market areas for services; larger settlements are fewer & farther apart than smaller settlements & provide services for a larger number of people who are willing to travel farther  
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Central Place   a market center for the exchange of services by people attracted from the surrounding area  
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Centripetal Force   an attitude that tends to unify people and enhance support for a state  
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Cereal Grain   a grass yielding grain for food  
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Chaff   husks of grain separated from the seed by threshing  
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Chain Migration   migration of people to a specific location because relatives or members of the same nationality previously migrated there  
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Chlorofluorocarbon (CFC)   a gas used as a solvent, a propellant in aerosols, a refrigerant, and in plastic foams and fire extinguishers  
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Circulation   short-term, repetitive, or cyclical movements that recur on a regular basis  
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City-state   a sovereign state comprising a city and its immediate hinterland  
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Clustered Rural Settlement   a rural settlement in which the houses and farm buildings of each family are situated close to each other and fields surround the settlement  
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Colonialism   attempt by one country to establish settlements and to impose its political, economic, and cultural principles in another territory  
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Colony   a territory that is legally tied to a sovereign state rather than completely independent  
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Combine   a machine that reaps, threshes, and cleans grain while moving over a field  
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Commercial Agriculture   agriculture undertaken primarily to generate products for sale off the farm  
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Compact State   a state in which the distance from the center to any boundary does not vary significantly  
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Concentration   the spread of something over a given area  
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Concentric Zone Model   a model of the internal structure of cities in which social groups are spatially aranged in a series of rings  
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Connections   relationships among people and objects across the barrier of space  
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Conservation   the sustainable use and management of a natural resourse, through consuming at a less rapid rate than it can be replaced  
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Consumer Services   businesses that provide services primarily to indivvidual consumers, including retail services and personal services  
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Contagious Diffusion   the rapid, widespread diffusion of a feature or trend throughout a population  
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Cosmogony   a set of religious beliefs concerning the origin of the universe  
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Cottage Industry   manufacturing based in homes rather than in a factory, commonly found before the Industrial Revolution  
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Council of Government   a cooperative agency consisting of representatives of local governments in a metropolitan area in the United States  
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Counterurbanization   net migration from urban to rural areas in more developed countries  
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Creole (Creolized Language)   a language that results from the mixing of a colonizer's language wiht the indigenous language of the people being dominated  
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Crop Rotation   the practice of rotating use of different fields from crop to crop each year, to avoid exhausting the soil  
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Crop   grain or fruit gathered from a field as a harvest during a particular season  
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Crude Birth Rate (CBR)   the total number of live births in a year for every 1,000 people alive in the society  
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Crude Death Rate (CDR)   the total number of deaths in a year for every 1,000 people alive in the society  
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Cultural Ecology   geographic approach that emphsizes human-environment relationships  
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Cultural Landscape   fashioning of a natural landsccape by a cultural group  
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Culture   the body of customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits that together constitute a group of people's distinct tradition  
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Custom   the frequent repetition of an act, to the exxtent that it becomes characteristic of the group of people performing it  
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Demographic Transition   process of change in a society's population from a condition of high CBRs & CDRs to a condiiton of low CBRs & CDRs & higher total population  
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Demography   the scientific study of population characteristics  
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Denomination   a division of a branch that unites a number of local congregations in a single legal and administrative body  
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Density   the frequency with which something exists within a given unit of area  
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Density Gradient   the change in density in an urban area from the center to the periphery  
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Dependency Ratio   the # of people under the age of 15 and over the age of 64, compared to the # of people active in the labor force  
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Desertification   degradation of land, especially in semiarid areas, primarily because of human actions like excessive crop planting, animal grazing, and tree cutting  
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Development   a process of improvement in the material conditions of people through diffusion of knowledge and technology  
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Dialect   a regional variety of a language distinguished by vocaulary, spelling, and pronunciation  
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Diffusion   the process of spread of a feature or trend from one place ot another over time  
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Diocese   the basic unit of geographic organization in the Roman Catholic Church  
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Dispersed Rural Settlement   a rural settlement pattern characterized by isolated farms rather than clustered villages  
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Distance Decay   the diminishing in importance and eventual disappearance of a phenomenon wiht increasing distance from its origin  
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Distribution   the arrangement of something across Earth's surface  
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Double Cropping   harvesting twice a year from the same field  
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Doubling Time   the number of years needed to double a population, assuming a constant rate of natural increase  
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Ebonics   dialect spoken by some African-Americans  
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Economic Base   a community's collection of basic industries  
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Ecumene   the portion of Earth's surface occupied by permanent human settlement  
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Edge City   a large node of office and retail activities on the edge of an urban area  
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Elongated State   a state with a long, narrow shape  
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Emigration   migration from a location  
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Enclosure Movement   the process of consolidating small landholdings into a smaller number of larger farms in England during the eighteenth century  
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Environmental Determinism   a 19th & early 20th century approach to the study of geography that argued that the general laws sought by human geographers could be found in the physical sciences. geography was therefore the study of how the physical environment caused human activities  
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Epidemiological Transition   distinctive causes of death in each stage of the demographic transition  
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Ethnic Cleansing   process in which more powerful ethnic group forcibly removes a less powerful one in order to create an ethnically homogenous region  
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Ethnic Religion   a religion with a relatively concentrated spatial distribution whose principles are likely to be based on the physical characteristics of the particular location in which its adherents are concentrated  
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Ethnicity   identity with a group of people that share distinct physical and mental traits as a product of common heredity and cultural traditions  
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Expansion Diffusion   the spread of a feature or trend among people from one area to another in a snowballing process  
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Extinct language   a language that was once used by people in daily activities but is no longer used  
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Federal state   an internal organization of a state that allocates most powers to units of local government  
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Ferrous   metals, including iron ore, that are utilized in the production of iron and steel  
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Filtering   a process of change in the use of a house, from single-family owner occupancy to abandonment  
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Fission   the splitting of an atomic nucleus to release energy  
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Floodplain   the area subject to flooding during a given number of years according to historical trend  
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Folk culture   culture traditionally practiced by a small, homogeneous, rural group living in relative isolation from other groups  
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Forced migration   permanent movement compelled usually by cultural factors  
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Fordist migration   form of mass production in which each worker is assigned one specific task to perform repeatedly  
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Formal region   an area in which everyone shares in one or more distinctive characteristics  
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Fossil fuel   energy sourced formed from the residue of plants and animals buried millions of years ago  
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Fragmented state   a state that includes several discontinuous pieces of territory  
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Franglais   a term used by the French for English words that have entered the French language  
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Frontier   a zone separating two states in which neither state exercises political control  
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Functional region   an area organized around a node or focal point  
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Fundamentalism   literal interpretation and strict adherence to basic principles of a religion  
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Fusion   creation of energy by joinng the nuclei of two hydrogen atoms to form helium  
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Created by: SophomoreStud08